While hats don't give you any bonus whatsoever, they're the only way to make you stand out from the unwashed masses. It doesn't matter if you stole all intel, capped all points and pushed the little cart uphill in the snow, hats are the only way to show yourself in the game right now.

Hats are like the forbidden fruit. Now that we've tasted it, we're aware of our "un-hatness" and how inappropriate it is. The crowd crave for hats but there is no way to fight for it. No achievement to unlock, no boars to kill, no quests to grind, nothing. Except...

Some crafty players created "idle servers" which you can join and... do nothing, you see... there isn't anything involved in getting the coveted hat drops beside being logged in, and since this is all that is required, people join servers to do... nothing.

A craftier player created a program to log you on idle servers without even running the game! Now you can do nothing while doing more productive things like, I don't know... playing a game or something.